


Monster

by ceywoozle



Series: One Word Bottomjohn Prompts [91]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-03
Updated: 2016-05-03
Packaged: 2018-06-06 04:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6738439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceywoozle/pseuds/ceywoozle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One day John will find out.</p><p>Part of the One Word BottomJohn Prompt series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Monster

It's easy to see. In his face, distorted and oblong, something smudged and unfinished, some builder's half-finished project, unloved and forgotten. In his hair, wild and unruly, too long and too short, something belonging to a child, a parody of innocence, asking for trust and abusing it. In his hands, too large, too bony, made for tearing and strength, for overwhelming and suffocating and control. His body, angular and graceful, sharp edges that tear like a knife, splitting the space around him into ribbons.

It's easy to see. In his eyes, cold and hungry. It's easy to see when he looks at himself.

There is a flush to his animal face, new, and he catalogues it with the rest. Another abuse of trust, this one, lending him frailty that he doesn't feel. He watches it, tendrils of blood beneath his skin, like finger marks dragged down his neck and chest, fading to pink beneath his ribs before disappearing into the deeper bowels of his belly.

He stares at himself. Watching. The familiarity of his deformities removing fear. He wonders what it would be like to look upon himself for the first time, to observe the monstrous workings of limb and sinew and expression like a nightmare bearing down upon one. He's almost envious of them, all the people he hasn't met. He wonders what it would be like to encounter himself, how he would acquit himself against him. Would he be afraid? Would he run away?

Stupid, of course. Monsters don't fear others of their kind.

“Sherlock?”

He starts, looking over his shoulder in the reflection of the mirror.

“John.” Tousled and pale, except for the high spots of colour on each cheek. He blinks in the brightness of the bathroom light and his eyes scrunch closed and Sherlock is entranced, the two of them together in the mirror, side by side in their reflection, the monster and its captive, and he is reminded of how careful he has to be to make sure John doesn't figure it out, that John never realises what he really is.

He leans over and flips off the light.

“Did I wake you up?” he asks, and in the sudden darkness there is nothing to warn him of the two arms that come to slide around his waist, the human body, fevered from sleep, pressing up against his own.

John doesn't answer, simply mumbles a sigh into the skin of his back, and Sherlock feels the intensity of it like a bruise. He has these marks all over him by now, the small patches of humanity that John has pressed into him with his breath and his fingers and his words. The area they encompass enlarges every day until Sherlock knows, one day, he will look in the mirror and he will no longer see the monster he was but the human that John has created from it.

“Come on,” Sherlock says, and turns around, taking John's pliant body in his arms, leading him through the dark to the lighter shadow of the bed. John's protest is less than a sigh, given off in half-sleep. As Sherlock presses them together, John's back held tightly to him, his thighs spread around Sherlock's insistent pressure, he knows that in the morning John will remember this as more than half a dream, waking up hard and ready, his mind not alert enough yet to wonder why his body is still open until Sherlock is once again inside him. And then he will laugh, a soft breath of sound carried on the sighs of his pleasure, and he will twist his head around and demand a kiss and Sherlock will give it to him, sliding his tongue as deep as it will go, lapping at the humanity inside as well as out.

One day, John will find out. He will look at Sherlock and see that the monster is gone without ever having known it was there at all, but by then it will be too late.

 


End file.
